Microsoft Gets Portal for Digital Dashboard

Microsoft Corp. furthered its digital dashboard strategy by aligning with InfoImage Inc. (www.infoimage.com). The company will use Microsoft software in the next version of its corporate portal product, freedom.

InfoImagefreedom, which provides a personalized, integrated view to both structured and unstructured data, can be implemented across an enterprise or customized to provide line-of-business solutions such as sales, supply-chain, value-chain or executive portals.

Digital dashboards, according to Microsoft, help people work more efficiently by consolidating key information from disparate data sources, including corporate databases, enterprise resource planning systems, personal mail and calendaring, and the Internet, into a unified desktop view.

To help customers implement digital dashboards, InfoImage will provide consulting, systems integration and support services in addition to increasing its services capability for Microsoft-based solutions.

Microsoft’s own consulting services will provide knowledge transfer and architectural design expertise to InfoImage and work side-by-side with InfoImage engineers to develop technology consulting blueprints and service guides.

Jeff Raikes, Microsoft’s group vice president of worldwide sales and support, said this relationship is important on two fronts. First, the companies will provide a way for large organizations to connect knowledge workers to critical information and to each other. Second, InfoImage will help customers reap the business benefits of digital dashboard solutions through the company’s consulting services.

"For many of Microsoft’s most strategic customers, the digital dashboard has been a promising vision of the future of integrated information technology. This vision has now been crystallized around InfoImage’s freedomcorporate portal," says Gerry Murray, analyst at International Data Corp (IDC, www.idc.com). -- Thomas Sullivan